The importance of making children conscious of their power of
concentrating their attention needs to be kept constantly in mind.
Exercises in which children are asked to do as much as they can in a
period of five or ten minutes may be used to teach children what
concentration of attention is and of the economy involved in work done
under these conditions. The trouble with a great many adults, as well as
with children, is that they have never learned what it is to work up to
the maximum of their capacity. All too frequently in our attempts to
teach children in classes we neglect to provide even a sufficient amount
of work to demand of the more able members of the group any considerable
amount of continued, concentrated attention.

We seek in our work as teachers not only to secure a maximum of
attention to the fields of work in which children are engaged, but also
to arouse interests and enthusiasms which will last after school days
are over. We think of interest often, and properly too, as the means
employed to secure a maximum of attention, and, in consequence, a
maximum of accomplishment. It is worth while to think often in our work
in terms of interest as the end to be secured. Children should become
sufficiently interested in some of the subjects that we teach to care to
be students in these fields, or to find enjoyment in further work or
activity along these lines, either as a matter of recreation or, not
infrequently, as a means of discovering their true vocation in life.
That teacher who has aroused sufficient interest in music to enable the
student of musical ability to venture all of the hard work which may be
necessary in order to become a skillful musician, has made possibly his
greatest contribution by arousing interest or creating enthusiasm. The
teacher whose enthusiasm in science has led a boy to desire to continue
in this field, even to the extent of influencing him to undertake work
in an engineering school, may be satisfied, not so much in the